


to live, to grow

by ink_kettle



Category: Avatar: Legend of Korra
Genre: F/F, Healthy Relationships, Multi, Pre-Poly, Shameless abuse of long sentences
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-09
Updated: 2018-04-09
Packaged: 2019-04-20 18:23:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,749
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14266920
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ink_kettle/pseuds/ink_kettle
Summary: “It was only later that I wondered about it and tried to look back. But by then I could only see that there was once a time when we had walked apart; and then a time when we walked together.”― Sarah Waters, Fingersmith





	to live, to grow

In the months after the storm Amon made, there’s Lin.

Lin at some point in the lugubrious afternoons in the hot sun of Air Temple Island’s summer, stomping up the winding steep-sloped stairs like they’ve personally offended her (raising little puffs of dirt with each footfall, sometimes sending rumbles and shivers across the surface of the earth – it’s always easier to break the soil in the garden after Lin has come by), come to summon Tenzin to the clutches of smoky grey city across the sparkling sapphire bay for this or that matter, only a short, brusque nod to Pema, hustling Tenzin out the door and then never seen for maybe days on end, Korra-Mako-Bolin-Asami popping in and out to steal sweetcakes, Jinora nose-deep in a new book, Ikki’s torn dress, Meelo’s scraped knee, Rohan’s baby wail.

Lin in the evening, staggering in half-holding up Tenzin while weaving towards Pema like a pair of permanently-exhausted drunks, their heads inclined over chopsticks and untouched bowls of rice, hoarse voice intermixed with Tenzin’s beloved deeper one councilman  _ this  _ or triple threat  _ that _ , shadows longer than the scars Amon left under her eyes, careful stiffness and straight-spine, not quite yielding, not quite eating, candlelight flickering over her metal armour and a murmur of gratitude to Pema, the stars outside far away with the ugly beat of the city urging her back; even sometimes Meelo following at Lin’s heels and peppering her with questions, even rarer the moments when Lin endures it without fleeing immediately, tight-smile and eyes of jade and steel and ice, until Pema can apologetically wrest her son away; evenings that slip well-oiled into darkness, wiled away as they trade conversation at the table until the moon is high, Pema moving in and out of their circle, putting that child to bed or this one, or giving up and going upstairs to await Tenzin at some awful hour of the morning, bruise-eyed and sweet, Lin gone, either to harass the morning ferryman or do whatever it is she does to return home when all the boats have stopped (Pema finds it’s best for her own health and heartbeat not to ask about the details of Lin and lawbreaking).

(Lin, sometimes, at night, in the guest-bedroom on the ground floor closest to the stark rocky wall of the cliff where jasmine blooms thick outside the walls, Lin’s presence, somehow, encouraging the plants to grow thick and lush like she feeds them with stubbornness and stress, and the window is never quite shut and the outside is more  _ in  _ than  _ out  _ and shining on  a pile of meticulously rubbed-shining metal armour and a lump under the covers, Lin's feet off the ground and never-quite-sleeping with both eyes closed, radio on to a low rumble for her officers like children trying to keep quiet for mother; somehow Pema can’t ever quite deny Tenzin’s awkward, pleading face when Lin so clearly is about to fold over from exhaustion and stress, crumple inwards like she’s not made of  _ grit  _ and  _ stone  _ and uncompromising things (besides, if she falls asleep in the dining room  _ Pema’s  _ certainly not strong enough to shift an earthbender in steel with an aggressive tendency to burrow into solid stone like it's putty and Tenzin skitters away at the first sight of such things to fetch blankets and fuss over the kids and largely remove himself from the responsibility of the Chief, comatose, in his front hall).)

Lin in the morning, gruff and grateful, rising even earlier than the sun and stalking about in the predawn, either vanishing into the stars across the bay with the smoky factory stacks or rarely staying long enough to help the acolytes get the breakfast started, stabbing grumpily at rice and dumplings nonetheless with a clear-eyed gaze that belies the early hour, already fully-armoured against the world and impervious to attack, trading dry quips with the Avatar over the table while Tenzin scolds Korra about meditation techniques and Pema tries not to laugh when Lin inevitably upbraids Tenzin for the complaint of choice for the morning – maybe interfering with police business and bailing Korra and her friends out of jail for the umpteenth time, or allowing this councilman to say that, or even just, apparently, for breathing too loudly – she spares, however, Pema her caustic tongue, and Pema isn’t quite sure if it’s a mark of respect or awkwardness or attempt to alienate; either way, it doesn’t matter, because Pema has the greatest weapon to use against Lin – Meelo’s devotion, Ikki’s chatter, Jinora’s probing, disturbing questions, Rohan’s nappy-changes, the minutiae of a life Lin abjectly refused – and Lin knows it, too, and she never makes the mistake of staying on Air Temple Island without some business affair to run back to the moment Pema looks towards her with a gleam in her eye (Pema tries not to do it too often, a weapon used too often to pry away an insistent visitor dulls the blade, and she really doesn’t mind Lin here, better here than that dingy office in the headquarters, the lumpy pallet bed that had nearly made tears come to Pema’s eyes for sympathetic horror, it’s just sometimes she thinks Tenzin lets Lin work him too hard, and his family needs him as much as Republic City does).

There’s Lin in the summer, and Lin in the autumn, and Lin in the winter, and when spring rolls around again Lin’s still there and so is Pema and Tenzin and well, it’s beginning to feel like there’d be something missing if she wasn’t.

Pema knew when she married Tenzin that somehow he and Lin would always be something of a matched set, because true love never really fades but only evolves to grow with the person and Pema accepts as happily as she did then that there is always going to be a side of him that Pema doesn’t quite reach, just as she will never usurp his siblings and his father and his mother from his heart, but it is no less hers (which isn’t to say that Pema wasn’t justifiably  _ nervous  _ when their relationship was still young, because Lin is both terrifying and deadly and a whole host of other knee-weakening adjectives besides) – but, well, Pema’s hands automatically fix an extra cup of jasmine tea now (Lin’s favourite) and then another, because she always drinks it a little too quickly and looks at the cup like its small size has betrayed her, and Tenzin’s faint surprise is worth it when Pema silently rises to pick up the other one, and Lin looks up at her and she’s a little too distinguished to flush but her lips purse a little, embarrassed at having been caught (later, when they’re getting ready for bed, red-cheeked Tenzin mutters  _ “I used to buy her ginseng, I thought she just didn’t like tea”  _ and Pema smiles to herself under the cover of darkness – men, perennially unobservant.)

There’s Lin in Pema’s nightmares, in the chill of the Equalist prison with Rohan’s just-born weight on her chest and post-labour fatigue and pain weighing down her body, fending off the monsters that tramp up and down the halls, goggle-green-glass eyes, masked faces, electrified gloves, Lin’s armour unyielding and cold, and her eyes stonier and chillier yet, slump-shouldered, hollow, but still blazing with stiff, ugly pride, and there was Lin every day afterwards, robotic, stuck in her armour, walking with a slight uncertainty, barely perceptible, like losing her bending had loosened something inside her, left her rattling in her skin like she is too small to reach beyond it, childlike almost, in the way she’d reach for the counter to check her depth-perception, or sway, like she’d forgotten where the ground was (tiny things, barely noticeable, the kids never saw – Tenzin made quietly sure of it, just close enough to turn any hitch into a smooth, planned motion, while Pema brewed kettlefuls of jasmine and didn’t ask before briskly undoing the latches on the armour that Lin struggled to reach under the guise of fetching in a late-night cup – Lin wandered the island to get away from the children and never quite managed to leave). 

There was Lin on Oogi’s back, sat next to Pema while Asami consoled a dead-eyed Korra, a silent pillar that must have rebuked Korra’s moping, and Lin in Katara’s shelter, Lin in the Pole flexing her earthbending with a victorious smile that sank, warmly, into the bone like no fire’s heat could.

There’s Lin in the memories Tenzin doesn’t talk about and increasingly, Lin in the dreams Pema doesn’t talk about either, and while they normally joke together about the stupidly attractive clerk in the City Hall with the stupidly attractive jaw that Pema can’t look in the eye for blushing and the speculative women that stare at blumbering, stuttering Tenzin as if their gaze can penetrate his robes and see how far down the tattoos  _ really  _ go, Pema feels that mentioning that she appreciates the sharpness of Lin’s eyes and the confident power in her movements is off-limits, somehow, because she  _ knows  _ Tenzin has  _ appreciated  _ that and more, and it’s  _ Lin,  _ who has her own bedroom now with jasmine plants outside and a drawer with clothes in it that she actually  _ wears  _ and it feels, somehow, inappropriate, like they are betraying her trust (Pema ponders this darning a rip in one of the tank tops they leave in Lin’s spare drawer – there was a suspicious stain on this one, like blood _ (probably not Lin’s)) _ .

And there’s Lin, arms folded across her chest like a fortress, voice like grating gravel in the sunlight of the kitchen, asking,  _ “Are you afraid of me, Pema?”  _ \- and the answer, given too quick, cheeks as red as the tomatoes she’s supposed to be washing,  _ “No, of course not! Why would I be?” - “Your heartbeat. I don’t want to - cause trouble for you and Tenzin-”  _ and now this is just insulting, and Pema’s entire world does not revolve around her husband’s wishes after all, and aren’t they all adults, old enough to know what they want, an element of spike in her voice -  _ “you couldn’t if you tried” -  _ but now Lin is smiling, saying,  _ “Glad to hear it”,  _ and when Pema’s heartbeat skips a little in response her eyes only crinkle at the edges, like they are sharing a private joke between the two of them.

In the months afterwards, Lin is there, but Pema really can’t bring herself to mind too much.


End file.
